Please excuse the ignorance of a relative newcomer (couple of months reading about NLP, halfway through WITW), but isn't 3rd Position (as an imagined/hallucinated state) whatever you want it to be? ...or perhaps more correctly, whatever is most useful to you in the context you are using it? For example, you could imagine 3rd Position as being a "supreme being" who knows all the thoughts and intentions of the people in the situation, chuckling wisely to him/herself as he watches their efforts to communicate. Or, you could imagine it as a small child (or an alien from another planet) who understands little of what is said, but is fascinated by the interaction between these beings. Both perspectives (and many others) will give you different detached/dissociated representations of the situation. Which one is "best" will depend on what you are trying to achieve when you look at that situation. ...or maybe you could train yourself to "cycle through" many different 3rd Positions to get lots of perspectives? I tried this briefly, and my brain nearly exploded, but it was fun! Hope that makes sense? Must remember not to read this forum during working hours... I've been pondering that thought for two hours now! ;-) Cheers, Jon P.S. Thanks to Carmen and John for a wonderfully thought-provoking book! I'm trying to discipline myself not to ask questions before I've read the whole thing, but I suspect I may already have failed. :-)